Okay, so it wasn’t around a corner, and the person had barged into her office intent on firing her, but she’d found it. Kerry smiled and leaned forward a little, picking up her pace.
Faster I go, faster I get back.
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DAR KEPT HER eyes closed, aware of the fact that she was alone in bed. This didn’t make her very happy. The waterbed was comfortable, but it was a lot warmer and more comfortable if it was full of a certain blonde woman she knew, who tended to drape nice smelling and cutely shaped parts of herself all over Dar.
On the other hand, Dar reasoned, she could also smell cinnamon and the scent of fresh coffee, which meant she was trading off waking up chilly and grumpy for sticky buns and a cup of Santa’s White Christmas in her big blue mug.
Hmm.
She heard soft clinks from the kitchen, then the light scuff of bare feet against tile heading in her direction. It was strange, but she could actually feel Kerry’s presence as her lover entered the room, bringing the nice smells closer and combining them with apricot skin scrub and the clean cotton T-shirt that covered Kerry’s freshly showered body.
Mm.
Dar briefly wondered if she could just suck on Kerry and forgo the sticky bun. She opened one eye. “Morning.”
“Hi there, cute stuff.” Kerry set the small tray down on their bedside table. On it was the anticipated blue mug and a plate with two buns. “How do you feel?”
Dar closed her fingers on the knee conveniently close by and squeezed. “Mm, not bad,” she joked wryly. “Like crap, honestly,” she then admitted. “I feel like I’ll never get rid of this headache, and my arm’s killing me. I think I slept wrong.”
Kerry rattled the small bottle on the tray. “I came prepared.” She removed a small glass from next to the mug. “Here.” She handed Dar some juice and three tablets.
Dar finished the juice and handed the glass back. “Thanks,” she said. “You better get dressed.”
“Oh.” Kerry plucked at her shirt, which had an almost life-size Dilbert sprawled across its surface. “You mean I can’t go to work like this? C’mon, Dar.”
Dar cocked her head slightly. “Well, okay, hon, but don’t stand with your back to the light, okay? It’s a little translucent.”
Kerry looked down. “It is?” she asked in surprise. “Where?”
A finger reached out and tickled a very sensitive spot.
“Yeak!” A snorting laugh escaped Kerry. “Okay, okay. I see your point.” She gazed fondly at Dar. “Let me go get into my monkey suit.”
Dar tangled her fingers in the soft cotton and tugged. “Thanks for breakfast,” she said. “And you can go to work dressed casual today if you want. It won’t kill anyone.”
Kerry considered that, then nodded. “Okay, I will,” she decided.
“I’m in the mood for jeans.” She turned and made her way into the living room, then took the stairs two at a time.
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“WHEN’RE WE GONNA see what we got?” Brent asked, sticking his hands in his pockets and regarding the locked steel box in the corner of Mark’s office.
Mark didn’t look up from the folder he was writing on. “When Dar says we do. Go do something, willya, Brent? It’s not going to levitate out of that box.”
Brent stayed put. “We risked our necks to get that thing.”
Now Mark looked up. “You volunteered.”
“So?” The tech squared a pugnacious jaw. “We still did.”
“And your point is what?” the MIS chief asked. “Look, you wouldn’t know what the hell was in there even if I did open and link it.
It’s not readable.”
Brent’s brow creased. “Huh? Then what’d we do it for? You mean we can’t use it?”
“I didn’t say that.” Mark took an impatient breath. “I said you can’t read it. I can’t read it. Yoda the Jedi Master can’t read it.” He pointed at the box. “But Dar can. She knows what formula she used to structure the sector copy. She’s the one who has to reconstruct it, okay?”
Brent looked interested. “Oh.”
Mark leaned back. “Hey. Why the fuck did you go with us?” he asked bluntly. “You spent the last two weeks blowing shit all over this office about how you felt about the boss.”
Brent studied him sullenly. “It’s not right.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, my aunt Matilda, and Dr. Laura with your homophobic bullshit,” Mark snapped. “All of you can kiss my ass. So why offer to help out someone you hate so much?”
Brent shrugged. “The Navy sucks,” he commented, then turned and walked out, leaving a bewildered Mark to stare after him.
“What the hell was that?” Mark asked the empty air. “Why the fuck do I get all the warped SIMMS in Miami working for me?” He shook his head and glanced at his screen. “Ah.” An alert showed him that Kerry had logged into the office systems. He checked a second alarm, scowling a little on seeing it remain dark. “Shit. C’mon, Dar. I want to know if we got those bastards, too.”
THE BOAT ROCKED up and down in the very light chop as Ceci walked along the edge of the deck.
Good thing,
she mused thoughtfully,
that I’m not prone to seasickness.
That would have been a hell of a thing to find
out after I talked Andy into this thing, wouldn’t it?
She spotted her husband seated on the very front of the bow, resting his arms on the railing as he watched the sun rise over the sea.
He was dressed in his shortie wet suit, which glistened with the seawater that also dampened his grizzled hair and scattered sparkles over his tanned skin.
“Hey, sailor boy.” Ceci took a seat next to him.
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“Y’know, Cec,” Andrew turned his head and looked thoughtfully at her, “I do believe I do not consider that a compliment anymore.”
Ceci looked at him. “Andy,” she put a hand on his leg, “don’t say that. A bunch of jackasses shouldn’t take a lifetime of pride away from you. C’mon now.” She found herself in the weird position of defending a service she’d never really liked or understood. “You know the vast majority aren’t like that. They’re like you.” She gazed into the pale blue eyes. “Well, not just like you.”
Andrew sighed. “Ah remember doing bartering myself back on that there base.”
“Everyone did,” Ceci laughed. “C’mon, Andy. That’s how we managed to trade enough for that Christmas party that one year, remember? When you won that stuffed tiger from Brad at the carnival, and gave it to Dar?”
Andrew brooded. “How was that different than what this was? Jeff said he done it for his family. Well, I done that for my family.”
“Hon,” Ceci managed not to smile, “I don’t think even the attorney general, bless her good, cracker heart, would see tins of peanut butter and a case of beer in the same light as selling black-market M16s and cocaine.”
“Mph.”
“Besides, how could we possibly deny Dar her peanut butter?” Ceci asked. “She ate so much of that, I’m surprised she doesn’t carry a cane and wear a top hat and spats.”
Andrew laughed wryly in pure reflex. “She surely did like that stuff,” he agreed, then sighed. “Maybe that’s how it starts, though. Folks think that’s all right, then it just goes a little further, and further—”
“No.” Ceci shook her head. “There’s a line there, Andy. You and I both know that. Someone made the decision to cross that line.” She put a hand on his arm “It just so happens that person was a friend of ours.”
Andrew scowled. “Jackass.”
“Mm.”
“Hope Dar nails his ass t’the ground with a sharpened flagpole.”
Now it was Ceci’s turn to laugh.
DAR LAY QUIETLY in bed, soft New Age music providing a background as she drowsed, allowing the painkillers to ebb some of the throbbing from her arm and head. There were a dozen things she could be doing, she admitted, but it was much easier to do what she’d promised she’d do, which was rest and allow her body to heal.
It was hard to remember the last time she’d just slept in all day. She and Kerry kept pretty busy; even on weekends they were out on the boat, or driving down to the Keys, or...Dar smiled sleepily. Or shopping.
She’d discovered she liked shopping with Kerry. Even when they 302
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were looking for something totally mundane, like plates, she found herself enjoying the process. Last time they’d gone to the mall, she’d even done a little clothes shopping, both she and Kerry having fun remembering the first time they’d done that, mere weeks after they’d first met.
And this time they shared a dressing room. Dar chuckled softly as she indulged herself in a memory of the two of them buttoning and zipping each other.
And unbuttoning and unzipping.
Dar idly hoped Saks Fifth Avenue didn’t videotape their patrons.
The phone rang, causing her to reluctantly open her eyes and peer at the table. With a groan, she rolled over and reached out to slap the speaker button. “Hello?”
“Good morning, Dar.”
Dar let her eyes close again. “Morning.” She returned her mother’s greeting cordially. “What’s up?”
“Your father’s temper.”
That got one eye open. “Don’t tell me it’s the Priceline.com commercials again,” she said.
Ceci chuckled wryly. “Actually, his new pet peeve is the erectile dysfunction minimovies that have been playing recently.”
Dar’s brow wrinkled. “Ew.”
“Mm,” her mother agreed. “At any rate, he took a ride down to the base yesterday and didn’t come back very happy. Apparently they’re covering their tracks pretty thoroughly.”
“Um,” Dar tried to dredge up some interest. “Figures.”
There was a moment’s silence. “You doing all right?” Ceci finally asked warily.
“Pretty much,” Dar answered. “Been laying in bed most of the morning.”
“Ah. I see.” Ceci seemed to consider this statement seriously for a little while. “Well, I went to the technological depths of iniquity and managed to produce a pan of something that might, if you don’t look too closely, pass as brownies to cheer your father up.”
Dar chuckled in pure reflex.
“Mind if I drop some by?”
Dar lifted her head up and peered at the phone in honest surprise.
For a second, she almost politely declined, then a sudden impulse took over. “S...sure.” She cast a quick look around. “Place is a mess.”
Her mother laughed audibly. “See you in a bit.”
“Okay,” Dar replied, then heard the line drop. She rested her chin on her wrist and stared at the phone, then shook her head. “Look out, Chino. We’re getting a visitor.”
The Labrador lifted her head up and wagged her tail. She was curled up in her bed next to where Dar was lying.
“My mother’s coming over,” she informed the dog. “And she’s
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bringing brownies.” Dar rolled over cautiously and regarded the ceiling. “Bet if I look outside, it’ll be snowing.”
“Growf.”
“Mm. But if she offers to do the laundry, we’re outta here.” Dar covered her eyes with one hand. “Scary. Very scary.”
KERRY KNELT BESIDE the lockbox and lifted the security tag, reading the number off it and recording it on a large manila file clipped onto the clipboard she was carrying. “Okay.” She stood and wrote the cataloging entry on the file folder. “Do we have point-to-point concurrence that this never left anyone’s view?”
“Yep,” Mark said. “I made sure I kept three guys with me to sign off on it.”
“Good.” Kerry took a step back and dropped into the chair across from Mark’s desk, crossing one denim-covered ankle over her knee.
“Now we just have to find out if there’s anything useful in there.”
“Yeah,” Mark sighed. “Boss won’t be in ’til Wednesday, huh?”
“Nope,” Kerry said. “And I’d feel better if we did all the analysis here, rather than have that brought to the house. It’s going to be touchy as it is.”
The MIS chief nodded. “I’m with you. They get that team into the base?”
Kerry chewed on the end of her pen. “Yeah. I got a call from that JAG officer. They’ve been there all day, and so far, it all looks clean.”
Mark snorted.
Kerry acknowledged his derision with a twitch of her lips. “Not that we don’t already have some data on them. But nothing major.
Mostly bad or shady bookkeeping on stuff like supplies.”
“So, if there’s nothing in this thing,” Mark kicked the lockbox,
“that’s it? They just get off?”
Kerry stood up and exhaled. “If we can’t prove anything, then, yes,” she agreed. “Or, to be more specific, if we can’t provide information to the authorities that will allow them to prove it. We’re just the analysts.”
“Bet Dar doesn’t feel that way,” Mark commented. “Man, I can’t believe she grew up there. My brain can’t process that.” He glanced at Kerry. “Weird.”
“Why?” Kerry asked, pausing in the doorway on her way out.
Mark shrugged, a little uncomfortably. “I don’t know. It was like when she took us out to that little island place, y’know? I just figured she went through the same kind of growing up around here that I did.
Malls, football games, whatever.”
Kerry studied him. “Didn’t figure her for a redneck?”
Mark scowled. “She’s not a friggin’ redneck. She’s just a, a—”
“Cracker,” Kerry supplied gently.
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“No way.”
“Mark.” Kerry came back over and sat down, resting her hands on her knees and putting her envelope down. “I love Dar. You know that, right?”
He blushed.
“She’s my best friend, and my partner, and I wouldn’t trade her for anyone or anything in the world,” Kerry went on. “She’s not embarrassed by her origins, so why should you be?”
Another shrug. “It’s just weird.”
Kerry sighed. “I think it makes her achievements all the more spectacular,” she said. “Because she really did start from nothing, and everything she’s gained has been on her own terms, and by her own brilliance.”
Mark looked up. “Yeah.”
After a speculative look, Kerry admitted, “I envy her for that. It must be an amazing feeling to know you’ve totally controlled your own destiny.”
Mark played with the chip puller he used as a paperweight. “She has, hasn’t she? I never really thought about that,” he told Kerry. “Hey, you had lunch yet?”
Kerry let the subject change pass. “Not yet. Want to go down?